the end of the affair
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: You hate Stefan and you wish – you have wished for a long time that he might hate you too. — Klaus. Stefan. Caroline. [Klaroline. Occupational Steroline. Accidental-If-You-Have-Your-Goggles-On-Klefaroline. Somewhat ensemble, 1/8, w.c 4,410]


**disclaimer: **one day i'll own something. hopefully. or steal it if i gotta idk girls gotta eat.  
><strong>dedication:<strong> if you knew how badly burnt i've been by corporate douchebags and sell-out authors and been brought down by ships, you would understand that i'm badly coping. badly.  
><strong>warning:<strong> nearly word-for-word adaptation of Graham Greene's amazing novel, _the end of the affair_. my god, that book gives me chills. and the movie. seven words; Ralph _HELLA_ FIENNES and JULIANNE_ FLAWLESS_ MOORE. beautiful, beautiful, beautifuuuuuul. so more or less following the format of the book, except in second person, and like, with AU in mind. forgive me. i'm useless. so not looking for die-hard readers, this is a casual read. also i've already posted this on my ffnet tumblr.  
><strong>notes:<strong> guys, i know i just posted a fic 24 hours ago and i still have a zillion on-going project but please see note below  
><strong>even moar notes:<strong> friendly reminder that i am still trash.

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><p><strong>The end of the affair <strong>_You hate Stefan and you wish – you have wished for a long time that he might hate you too._ — | Klaus | Stefan| Caroline | Klaroline | Occupational Steroline | Accidental-Klefaroline-If-You-Have-Your-Goggles-On | Somewhat ensemble, 1/8, w.c 4,410

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><p>You introduce yourself, when introducing is required, as a writer. That always get's an exaggerated "Oh, really?" from conversation partners. A widening of the eyes, the sly exchange of glances with the rest of the party, emphatic smiling – a <em>writer<em>, you say? Their postures relax in the company of such low-suited people. A writer. Inwardly they are sneering, feigning high interest or the barest of polite interest. They loosen up, the champagne nearly sloshes in their gesticulations, and ridicule of you makes their mouths slacker, their speech unchecked, accelerated. You listen and you store. A writer is ridiculous, bourgeois – cultured enough to contribute to conversation, but too low to be anything but resigned to the mood of the occasion. Riding along agreeable, just happy to be there, to have been _invited_. A journalist however, is dangerous.

It is a wet morning when you meet Mr. Salvatore again. If you kept count you could call it two years. The invitation for coffee comes abruptly the night before and you'd had to light a cigarette before you read the note a fourth time, peering through smoke at the bold, cursive scrawl of a man you once dared to call your friend.

He's always had impeccable hand writing, confident curves and long, elongated tails, all effortlessly elegant. It isn't a formal interview, or an attempt to get his foot in the tabloids, you know. He'd have sent a bottle of something for that, or Cuban cigars. Instead, the ink simply says

_Harvier's, seven sharp. Indulge me._

For a moment you wonder if it's about Caroline, but hate comes so abrupt, too large for your entire body to store safely. It has been two years, if you kept count. Two years since you last thought about her.

You like to think that this is true, that she is as banished from you as if she never mattered, was never there, but you are a resentful man with a memory that holds like the belly of a river. The old wrath sluices through you like your own blood, you will _never_ forget.

You don't have to go, but it plucks at you, like…like it is taking you by the elbow. After the note sleep is fitful, it occupies like it is laid next to you in the dark, an uninvited specter, and at three in the morning you sit up and don't bother with sleep at all. The note lies on a corner of your muddled desk, white in the gloom of your flat and there is this _need_ to see Stefan Salvatore again, to speak to him – and why shouldn't you? You hate Stefan, you hate his unshy grinning, his inoffensive ambitiousness. You hate Stefan and you wish – you have wished for a long time that he might hate you too.

If he didn't wear his ignorance so well, wasn't so at _home _with his blindness then Stefan might have discovered everything that had been really going on. Stefan might have discovered and the game could have stopped being a game, but Stefan does not know and you must tolerate him further, hate him in continued silence.

It is strange to see Stefan in the park. You are on your way to the meeting place, walking briskly through Brooklyn with your collar drawn up against your cheek. Your profession requires punctuality, Stefan has the luxury of not being on time, being this city's sweetheart and all.

It is strange to see Stefan in the park; shoulders slumped back against the bench: he likes a sort of privacy, a half-privacy really. Centre tables in grandiose restaurants, understated, grand like a politician should be, a smile for the camera here or there, some short, but excellent oratory. Brief indulgent tolerance of curious onlookers before he waves the cameras away, jovially returning to his meal with stylish, educated company… Stefan wears the lime light well, with a sort of effortless distance he balances image with reality. Stefan likes his lights after all – or so you thought – he had Caroline.

He's barely recognizable in the oversized trench. He has his face in his hands, crouched forward, rainwater dripping off his sodden clothes. You almost pass him. Some drunk stranded before dawn, half-asleep in the park, but you'd know Stefan anywhere and you hate him ferociously enough to spot him in a sea of doppelgangers.

When you stop he looks up at you like you've walked out of a picture, shocked that you materialized at all. It's early and the night had been rough with hail – no one sane is ready to venture out. Stefan is impossibly, unexpectedly stupid to be so uncharacteristically out-of-sorts in public. The place isn't crowded. He used to come here, you know, when he was still a brat from Brooklyn.

You could easily not have come. You could have walked past and he wouldn't even have seen you.

You take a seat next to him. "You walk through rain to get here?"

He doesn't straighten up, you tuck your umbrella and your briefcase over your lap. Stefan's eyes are red, you see him only in profile, like a washed out silhouette. He's pale, almost grey, the skin around his mouth slack. The clouds are still milling about like slow animals, they part a bit to let a grey muggy light down. It does his features no justice. Rain still drips down his hair, still runs down his coat. Stefan's fingers still cage around his temples and eyes. You could have walked straight past and pretended not to see each other, but Stefan Salvatore nudges back into the bench, his hands dropping into his lap. "Had to clear my mind."

"Thinking hard about something?"

There is an echo of old affection, dour and useless. "Yes, actually. Wondering whether I should come or not."

You signal for the two of you to get up. Stefan looks like death. You are glad that you can hide how unnerving this friendliness is. You hate Stefan, even when you aren't sure who he's pretending to be in that very moment. The politician or Caroline's husband.

"You invited me."

"I did," Stefan says. "It's been a while."

It has. You keep a hard silence, mouth glum, regard uninspired. You do not want to speak evasively so you say nothing to explain or excuse exactly _why_ it's been a while. You can't do all Stefan's thinking for him.

Stefan follows by your side, your apartment is close enough. You've got a coffee pot and some bread, that's got to be enough. It wouldn't do for the senator to take his hot mess to Havier's. The decision isn't hard to make, you're not even surprised at this, it's instinctive at this point. You keep more secrets than you give out, considering your profession. Stefan was also once your friend.

"How're the polls?" You ask, perfunctory, correct.

Stefan's eyes slide away, displeased by this routine. "Numbers are fine."

He follows you up the fire escape, you fish your keys out. He's lucky it's so early. No one follows you, clearly Stefan hadn't sought to inform his chauffeur, his protection (_or even his wife_, a snide voice supplies) – you don't think Stefan is the sort allowed to meander into the wet dawn whenever he pleases. He doesn't have the luxury of looking lost.

"How's Caroline?" You only ask because it'd be odd if you didn't. In truth you haven't read much about her, not from the people who know her, but you are starving beneath idle pleasantries, for word of her. Anything. Maybe she is unhappy, maybe they're making each other unhappy – you imagine, vindictive, that Stefan and Caroline _should_ become unhappy, deteriorate as all unions do, into frustrated intolerance of one another.

"She's out for the weekend with friends somewhere," And that sets poisonous imagining in you all over again as Stefan breezes past you, into the flat. Which friends? Where? Light surprises you when Stefan flicks it on, your white knuckled grip on your keys eases. "It's a long time since we've seen you, Klaus."

And there is that meddlesome 'we' again. It used to amuse you. _We_'re looking forward to seeing you. _We_ thought the neighborhood nice. _We_ hope you have a safe trip. _We_. To mean Stefan and Caroline _together._ Inconsolably attached. You used to laugh at him in the hours you stole from them. When you lay with one half of that 'we', but now sourly you are reminded that even then she was still loyal to him, could not bear to let you speak ill of him. For all she spoke of him to you. "I can't meet you on Tuesday, we're going to Kentucky." You might as well have been fucking them both.

"A long time," You place your things aside, follow Stefan into your kitchen area. You turn on the coffee machine in your bare kitchen.

Stefan sits on the counter, legs swinging. It's boyishness on too glum a man now, even if you might have found that sort of insolence charming once. He glances at your cabinets, your floor, unbothered by your Nietzche-esq décor. You are the sort of man who can make room for indulgences, enjoys them too, but your work-home will always be bare with the barest necessities.

He hasn't taken off his coat, he drips water everywhere. "Why… it must have been more than a year."

"November 1956."

"Two years? Really!" He swings his legs back, heels hitting dull against the cabinet's side. He sounds surprised. The fool, sitting slightly-slack jawed at the passage of time, dismayed, but not disturbed. Didn't he ever think to ask Caroline, _now where's that Klaus Mikaelson gone to_? You all live in New York, separated by a single neighborhood, not even far away. Why didn't he ask so he might see the blood drain out of her face as she rushed to make excuses for you, impersonal, unattached, _lies_.

Nothing in two _years_. Didn't it ever _occur_ to him to ask, _Why we haven't seen Klaus since Thanksgiving! Shouldn't we have him in, Caroline?_ And hadn't she ever answered, evasive, suspicious? You'd fallen out of their orbit, disappeared out his sight, no more missed than a piece of costume jewelry popping off a seam. Hadn't Stefan found it odd at all? Your absence must have been felt by Caroline for a little while; a day, a week, a month maybe – but by Stefan you had very firmly been forgotten.

You had hated his ignorance even when you used it for your own benefit. You hated it because others would use it as you had used it, to their own.

You sullenly park a mug next to him. "She in Houston?"

"No, she hardly ever goes anymore," Stefan frowns, look far away beyond your fridge, seeing through air and walls and getting distracted by whatever he finds there. Whatever it is, he seems to forget about the topic for a long time until he speaks. "Seeing them on Christmas is enough these days."

She's in France, as one of the sub-editor's speculated in its very own corner on page six of last Sunday. You remember because you thought it so inane that such a thing could be considered news-worthy, and been irrationally furious at the reminder. You cradle your mug in your hands, Stefan doesn't touch his. Your fingertips are near scalded, but you keep your grip because this situation is more than Stefan says it is and you don't interrupt your focus.

Here are a hundred things that don't make sense; Stefan says Caroline's left for the weekend, Caroline's been away for two whole weeks. That's either a_ long_ weekend or Stefan being economical with the truth, in either case it's none of your business.

Caroline makes a point of having easy access to Stefan, even when you'd gone off together it would never be for too far or for too long.

Stefan made a sudden appointment with you and then decided to abandon it – in fact if you'd gone your normal route through the laundry web of fire escapes instead of the scenic route (or as scenic as it gets in Brooklyn) you'd have missed each other, wouldn't have come back here, wouldn't have talked. Stefan isn't a man of impulse. He wants to talk to you. That could either mean that he's found out about the cause of the two years…but he doesn't lunge at you, doesn't get angry with you as he should. Stefan doesn't _know_. Suspecting is one thing…knowing is quite another. Stefan might finally be clever enough to suspect.

He's abandoned all his advisors to walk through the rain like a drunk at the lowest point of his life, not a man risking a political campaign. Stefan has called you because he suspects, hence the hesitation. It's about Caroline too. You might have come along as one of Stefan's acquaintances but the reason of your presence at functions with the two was always attached to Caroline, you were always treated as her friend. Her _guest._

"What's on your mind?"

You stand in your own corner, your hip against the kitchen island, Stefan slumped on the counter. You never had much to say to each other beyond business. Stefan's a brilliant conversationalist, so much of his career relies on being charming. And you? You have your moments.

You can't talk politics because that's moving towards work, and you _could_ both make facile observations on the war with the impersonal, careless, exhaustive knowledge of those who were in it…The truth is, you don't know Stefan. You wouldn't even have bothered to know Stefan if your father hadn't ordered it the way he did most things, like a very light suggestion.

You could see a future in Stefan, adopting your father's shrewd eye for potential. In twenty years he could be more popular than a Kennedy. Stefan _likes_ you. Then again, Stefan has the habit of liking everyone, even when he doesn't know very much about them. Whenever you met he'd ask about the same thing, your writing, your sister. You gave him the same answer for both, in essence unchanged except for minor alterations. Variations of the same boring thing. Repetitive. But Stefan never noticed, or cared enough to. You were each other's connection, both of mutual use. By being in his circle you were able to collect information and he had a voice in the papers.

You met each other at a Christmas fundraiser, your father suggested, so your sister introduced. _Writer?_ He asked with the same loftiness, but his smirk was knowing. You answered him with a grin and he'd taken you aside to go over an initiative he had in mind for the reconstruction of highschools, all this of course without giving the details of his campaign away – that was Stefan really, a door with a three inch crack into a darkened room, 'ajar' so to speak, but always, always closed.

_That's all well and good, Mr. Salvatore, but voters want to know if you're a family man._

You'd found him interesting, how he never gave anything away. He pointed you to his wife, a blond in a peach pink evening dress, and patted you on the back before he left.

You didn't want to write about a family man. You had an appointment for tea the next day with Mrs. Salvatore at their family home. You'd had the cold-blooded intention of finding something out, unmasking them both. She knew quick enough what you were at, and that was what awakened her dislike of you and your interest in her. Was Stefan an affectionate man? You asked. Where did you meet? It's been three years, are there children in the works? What did he have for breakfast? How late did he come home? Who was she before she became the wife of some ambitious ladder-climbing shit who wouldn't have made half so convenient a marriage if he hadn't been to Yale?

She was witty, her replies sharp with barbs – she was disappointed, you could tell. She'd been eager for an interview with someone who shared her husband's vision, who appreciated him and congratulated her for it. Stefan was important to her. You didn't have to tell her that he'd be going places in a few years, she'd already known that when she'd married him.

You'd asked her, disgustingly brutal, about her father's infidelity.

She'd replied that the both of you knew enough about infidelity, didn't you?

That had shut you up suddenly. You've never heard such cool viciousness from a woman. Rebekah is your sister and does not count. The source of your resentment was not hidden to you. You found Caroline attractive. You found her interesting. You found her and Stefan so well matched it unnerved you.

You are the sort of man who finds beauty that does not belong to you as villainous, as wounding, as placed to torment you. You can own the scenery as you pass it, can peruse museums and galleries at your leisure, but you are not allowed to touch this picture Stefan and Caroline have stepped out of. This perfect partnership. So you go out to prove it false, and in turn do more harm than good, are your own undoing.

She'd read your articles, she said. An admission that came like a conciliatory offer, one that spoiled everything. She had meant, you think, to remove the resentment of the exchange, make everything well again. At the end of it she invited you again, your underhandedness displaced as she thought of other things occupying her day. She'd asked for another interview. Forgetting what terrible company you were. In this forgetfulness you can hate her again. The first time you kissed her Stefan had been downstairs in the foyer, calling for her, asking where she'd kept the whisky the Canadian ambassador had brought along last. She'd taken a while to push you away, adjusting her hair and smoothing her skirt and moving past you with a smile that fooled. You'd had to take a minute to compose yourself, kissing your teeth, heat blooming in your face, hearing her gone, chattering with her husband below.

Stefan picks his coffee, gaze wandering dourly on everything. He surprises you when he speaks, "Have I ever come off as a jealous man?"

Your lips pause over the rim of your mug. "…No."

It's this lack of jealousy that had so made you hate Stefan in the first place.

You set down your mug. "Are you alright?"

"Klaus, I'm – " Stefan's mouth twists, his knuckles white. He shakes his head. "I'm being unreasonable."

"Out with it."

You expect it's whatever he drank last night that lets him speak, that and the rain, and the bone weary, exhausting cold. Perhaps he tells you because you're the man in the position to sniff out a scandal, because he thinks you already know something, or he's testing if you do. Caroline was loyal to him, but in the relationship you had with her you have come to learn things about Stefan; you know that he has a difficult relationship with his brother, because Caroline told you his name is never spoken by anyone. You know that when he was young he almost drowned. He's never told anyone but he never goes out near water, has sold the lake house, will courteously come up with prior engagements should he be invited on yachts or other things. You know that he likes an early breakfast. Caroline always talked about him, shared him with you in your bed. You knew so much already. Stefan doesn't look awake enough to be this sharp, to be manipulative. He thinks you're his friend. He says, "It's Caroline."

The rain starts again, you see it bleeding down the glass above the kitchen sink.

"Is she having trouble with her parents?"

"No, not more than the usual. I don't think so." He looks miserably around, finally meeting your eyes. His are red, blood shot – and it occurs to you that Stefan might actually have spent last night _crying_. He says, "Klaus, I'm having doubts."

Had you heard this from him two years ago, his agony – you might have been _ecstatic._ You'd have told him right then and there, the game would have stopped being a game. You'd have ripped Caroline from him, joyous in being discovered. Hiding is only fun for so long. There wouldn't have had to have been a two year separation, you wouldn't have had to hate Caroline. You'd have still had her, you would have _won._

This admission however, makes him strange to you. This vulnerability that you don't think Stefan has ever allowed even Caroline. It makes you dislike him less. For the first time you perhaps see him less like a role, and more like a man. A man can love, can hate, can be deceived. He is afraid. You can no longer patronize him, he has come to you with his fear and his human weakness, and you are an old devil watching an old victim be tortured by someone else. He is being deceived now, and you feel almost paternal. Stefan is not at home, has not felt at home for a long time. You, who have been through a two year siege in which you painted him as half of a hated aggressor now see him as he is. A man deceived. You know nothing about each other, you are mutual strangers.

"The worst thing, Klaus – is to suspect fellow man of imagined transgressions. It is intolerable to me…" Stefan swipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, his mouth shapes up into a shivery smile, belittling, guilty. "To think it of another…"

"You can trust me." He can't. He doesn't _truly_, that's why he comes with this to you, and because of course _you'd_ know Caroline enough to tell.

"I can't ask anyone about this. I won't pretend either, you'd see straight through it – I…well, it seems silly, doesn't it? I've made inquiries with an agency, under pretense of surveillance…I haven't followed it any further than that. The scandal itself…she's out in _France_ now, Klaus."

"I'm sorry."

"You always knew her best. Better than I." Stefan's mouth kicks up at the corner, and you wonder just how much he _does_ know. "I thought last week, that you normally follow such information, normally investigate. You've always been discrete, or rather…prudent. I told myself, I'd see Klaus and if he laughed at me then I'd leave the matter aside. But you didn't laugh."

He sits, biting his lip. Hair damp, your floor wet. It isn't funny at all. It should be, you should be laughing at him, that Caroline has deceived you both, for all her apparent loyalty. But you say, "It isn't exactly a laughing matter. As ridiculous as the thought of Caroline…"

"But it isn't really ridiculous, is it?" Stefan snaps, fingers tugging at his hair. "You don't think I'm ridiculous for suspecting?"

You should lie. You should call it ridiculous. But it makes you angry now. That he who was deceived before and did not notice it can notice deception _now_. When his awareness means _nothing_ to you. His ignorance destroyed your love. You forget the friendliness, the paternal affection – you want to hit Stefan. He is an ignorant man, his ignorance itself had felt like a conspirator, a partner in his wife's faithlessness. If he were not so confident in her blind loyalty he would have noticed those who sought to reap from his negligence. To you he is like the man who leaves all the doors and windows of his home open, uncannily vulnerable for a man who plays his cards close to the chest – he is accomplice to his own ruin, has let thieves in as if he has led them in by the hand. And you hate him now, his inconvenient innocence, his ignorance that had once allowed you access to Caroline, that had allowed you to love her.

"Of course," he says flatly, sitting up, anger grinding his jaw. "You think I'm ridiculous."

"Of course not," You snap. That's the devil in you speaking, your hatred. "It's entirely possible."

"I thought you were her friend?" And if Stefan were not so bitter he would almost sound smug.

"You'll always know her better than I did."

"We know her in different ways, you and I," Stefan says, and it must have finally have been occurring to him, or atleast in his imagination, exactly how you knew her best – same as it is occurring to you that he knows things about Caroline that she will never speak to you about. You are two men halving between you one formless woman.

"I didn't laugh at you, Stefan, because it isn't ridiculous." There is that insidiousness, idle speculation, devil's advocate. "That isn't to say I have anything against Caroline herself."

"Of course," Stefan says. "Never mind. Forget I asked. I've…not been sleeping well. It's strange not to have her there," and don't you know it, "Forget about it."

"You forget too."

"I wish I could," Stefan curses, he pushes aside his mug. His fist closes wretchedly. "Damn it all."

"Or… I could follow it up."

"Is that it then?" He asks gloomily, "Have other husbands sat here in your apartment, asking you to spy on their wives?"

"If it's true it could harm you. If it isn't…"

"I don't care about the polls!" And the way Stefan says it, spit fire and adamant – you almost think he believes it too. "Tailing my wife – "

"It isn't unusual. Journalists do it all the time. Even if I'm the only one who knows your suspicions, there're always others looking for a story. No one knows we're friends."

Stefan's mouth slackened, his eyes wide as if he dared not hope. "Off the books?"

"You'd pay me handsomely."

Stefan is used to being giving, hospitable; he likes giving charity rather than receiving it. It is how he and his wife have always operated, as hosts. "You'd do that for me?" He whispers, as if this is a show of loyalty he did not calculate, expect or ever find himself deserving of. This gracious act of friendship, this kinship you so _kindly_ offer. "You're a good friend, Klaus."

You'd laugh in his face if it didn't feel like he was on some level_ aware_ that he was laughing in yours.

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><p><em><strong>.<strong>_

_**tbc**_


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